During World War I, names common to the Allies referring to nations, cities, geographical features, military units, military operations, diplomatic meetings, places, and individual persons were agreed upon, adapting pre-war naming procedures in use by the governments concerned.
In the British case names were administered and controlled by the Inter Services Security Board (ISSB) staffed by the War Office.
Random lists of names were issued to users in alphabetical blocks of ten words and were selected as required.
Ewen Montagu, a British Naval intelligence officer, discloses in Beyond Top Secret Ultra that during World War II, Nazi Germany habitually used ad hoc code names as nicknames which often openly revealed or strongly hinted at their content or function.
Britain and the United States developed the security policy of assigning code names intended to give no such clues to the uninitiated.
The code name for the American A-12 / SR-71 spy plane project, producing the fastest, highest-flying aircraft in the world, was Oxcart.
Although the word could stand for a menace to shipping (in this case, that of Japan), the American code name for the attack on the subtropical island of Okinawa in World War II was Operation Iceberg.
The policy of recognition reporting names was continued into the Cold War for Soviet, other Warsaw Pact, and Communist Chinese aircraft.
Although this was started by the Air Standards Co-ordinating Committee (ASCC) formed by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it was extended throughout NATO as the NATO reporting name for aircraft, rockets and missiles.
[citation needed] However, some names were appropriate, such as "Condor" for the Antonov An-124, or, most famously, "Fulcrum" for the Mikoyan MiG-29, which had a "pivotal" role in Soviet air-strategy.
The intelligence units would then assign it a code name consisting of the official abbreviation of the base, then a letter, for example, "Ram-A", signifying an aircraft sighted at Ramenskoye Airport.
Throughout the Second World War, the British allocation practice favored one-word code names (Jubilee, Frankton).
That of the Americans favored longer compound words, although the name Overlord was personally chosen by Winston Churchill himself.
[citation needed] In the United States code names are commonly set entirely in upper case.